The History of Love
Encyclopedia
The History of Love: A Novel is the second novel
by the American writer Nicole Krauss
, published in 2005. The book was a 2006 finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction
.
Alma, now 20, is sent to the United States by her father, who feared the alarming news concerning fascist
Germany. Leo does not know that Alma is pregnant and dreams of going to America to meet her. A short time after, the Germans invade Poland and Leo takes cover in the woods, living on roots, small animals, bugs and what he can steal from farmers' cellars. After two years of hiding he goes to America and finds Alma but is shocked to hear she thought he had died in the war and had married the son of the manager of the factory she works at. He is devastated when he finds she has had another child with her husband. He asks her to come with him, but she refuses. She tells him, however, about his son Isaac who is now five years old. Heartbroken, Leo leaves and becomes a locksmith. Leo regularly watches Isaac from a distance, wishing to be part of the boy’s life but scared to come in contact with him.
In the present day, Leo is a lonely old man who waits for his death, along with his recently found (most probably in his imagination) childhood friend, Bruno Shultz, especially since Alma has been dead for five years. Leo still keeps track of his son, who has become a famous writer, much to Leo’s enjoyment since he believes Isaac inherited the talent from his father. Leo's depression deepens when he reads in a newspaper that his son has died at the age of 60, and Leo develops an obsession with finding his place in his son's world, to the extent that he breaks into Isaac’s house to see if he had read "The History of Love". Leo wants to reread "The History of Love", so he tries to obtain a copy of the book that he gave to his friend Zvi Litvinoff, who had immigrated to Chile. Their friendship dates from when Leo fell gravely ill in Poland and wrote his own obituary, after which Lev stole it in the hope that it would keep his friend alive. Leo writes a letter to Zvi, but his wife informs him that the book was destroyed in a flood, conspiring to hide that her husband did not write "The History of Love".
Unknown to Leo is that the book had been published in a small printing of two thousand copies (and re-published upon the supposed author's death) in Spanish, but under the name of Zvi Litvinoff, who copied the book thinking Leo was killed in Poland. Zvi felt so guilty for copying his book that he added his friend’s stolen obituary as the last chapter, telling the publisher that including the obituary was conditional to printing the book, although doing so did not make sense with the plot. When Leo called to recover the book, Zvi's wife, Rosa, fearing her husband would lose his fame if the world found out his well-regarded book was plagiarized
, lied by saying the manuscript had been destroyed in a flood, and then manufactured a flood in her house to realize the lie. Zvi died later without telling the world about the real author of "The History of Love".
In a parallel story, a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Alma Singer, named after the Alma in "The History of Love", her parents’ favorite book, is struggling to cope with the loss of her father due to cancer. Her mother becomes distant and lonely, escaping into her work of book translation. Her younger brother Bird, so called for jumping from the second story of a building hoping he could fly, seeks refuge in religion and believes himself to be one of God’s chosen people, thus distancing himself from reality. Alma finds refuge in one of her father’s hobbies: surviving in the wild. Alma also bears a crush on her Russian pen friend Misha, who has moved to New York. The two become a couple but they break up because of Alma’s incertitude.
One day, her mother receives a letter from a mysterious man named Jacob Marcus who requests that she translate "The History of Love" from Spanish to English for $100,000 dollars, to be paid in increments of $25,000 as the work progresses. Alma’s mother finds the sum suspicious, but the stranger confesses that his mother used to read the book to him when he was a child, so it has a great sentimental value. Alma sees this as an opportunity to help her mother recover from her depression and changes her mother’s straight-forward letters to Jacob Marcus into more romantic versions. When the letters stop before her mother completes the translation of the book, Alma decides to find the mysterious client.
She starts by noting down what she knows about Jacob Marcus in her diary, and concludes that the Alma in the book was real and proceeds to find her. She struggles in her search for Alma Mereminski, but succeeds when she realizes that Alma could have married and finds her under the name of Moritz. She is disappointed to hear that Alma has been dead for five years. However, she finds out that Isaac Moritz is the first of Alma's sons and a famous writer. When she starts reading his bestselling book, she finds that the main character's name is Jacob Marcus and realizes that Isaac Moritz had hired her mother to translate the book. Isaac is dead, however, which explains why his letters had stopped coming to their home. To be sure about her suspicions, Alma leaves a note on Isaac’s door asking who the writer of the novel is.
In the meanwhile, Bird finds Alma’s diary and misinterprets the names Alma Mereminski and Alma Moritz as being his sister’s real names, and believes they had different fathers. Isaac’s brother calls Alma, after reading the note and the original manuscript of the book, to tell her that Gursky is the real author, but Bird answers the telephone and it confuses him even further. He now suspects that Leopold Gursky is Alma's real father. To cleanse his sin of bragging and to regain the status as one of the chosen ones, he decides to set up a meeting with Alma and Gursky, thus doing a good deed without anybody knowing except God.
When the two receive the letter regarding their meeting, both are confused: Alma tries to discover which of the people she met during her searches could have sent her the note, while Leo comes to believe it was Alma who sent him the note, despite her being dead.
The two meet and are both a bit confused. Leo mentions some of his life's secrets in an effort to make conversation, while Alma pieces the puzzle pieces together. When Alma confronts him about his past asking him if ever loved a girl named Alma Mereminski or if he wrote "The History of Love", the old man finally feels a sense of recognition he was lacking during most of his life, has a heart attack and dies.
The last chapter is entitled "The Death of Leopold Gursky" and is identical with the last chapter of the book inside a book "The History of Love", both being the self written obituary of Leopold Gursky.
(1894–1940), as eulogized by Leo Gursky, has unmistakable affinities with Zvi Litvinoff's description of Leo's own writing style, and the description of Rosa Litvinoff's writing style in the early chapter "Forgive Me". The Polish writer Bruno Schulz
(1892–1942) and his classic The Street of Crocodiles
are mentioned several times in the novel, as is Nicanor Parra
(1914-), whose 1954 book of antipoems is translated by Charlotte Singer and read by the mysterious Jacob Marcus. A passing reference to "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) is also significant because Don Quixote is a novel that contains stand-alone stories within it, much in the same way that The History of Love contains excerpts of a mysterious book called "The History of Love." Other important literary allusions in the novel include references to James Joyce
, Franz Kafka
, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Leo Tolstoy
, Rubén Darío
and Pablo Neruda
.
Although he is never directly mentioned, the novel is also alluding to Isaac Singer. Leo's son's name is Isaac and Alma's last name is Singer.
, my life." The use of photographs here is significant because of photography's prominent role in the novel as proof of life or presence (an idea reinforced by the actual words of dedication.) Another important intersection of graphic design is how each character is associated with an icon that appears at the head of each chapter: Leo with a heart; Alma with a compass; Zvi with an open book; and Bird with an ark. These icons may be used as a starting point for defining these characters. For example, it makes sense that Alma is associated with a compass because she spends much of the novel doing research, asking questions, and investigating her past and the past of the mysterious book called "The History of Love." Finally, the novel includes interesting typography, such as cross-outs (in Alma's journal) and a series of pie graphs of her ancestry, which appear on page 96. The pie graphs and accompanying context illustrate how identity is not an open-or-shut question or a yes-or-no proposition.
, written by Jonathan Safran Foer
who had just married Krauss. Both books feature a precocious youth who set out in New York City on a quest. Both protagonists encounter old men with memories of World War II (a Holocaust survivor in Krauss and a survivor of the Dresden firebombing
in Foer). Both old men recently suffered the death of long-lost sons. The stories also use some similar and uncommon literary techniques, such as unconventional typography.
in early 2005, and is set to be directed by Alfonso Cuarón
. The movie is currently scheduled for release in 2012.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by the American writer Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss is an American author best known for her novels Man Walks Into a Room , The History of Love and, most recently, Great House...
, published in 2005. The book was a 2006 finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction
Orange Prize for Fiction
The Orange Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year...
.
Plot
Approximately 70 years before the present, the 10-year-old Polish-Jewish Leopold (Leo) Gursky falls in love with his neighbor Alma Mereminski. The two begin a relationship that develops over the course of 10 years. In this time, Leo writes three books that he gives to Alma since she is the only person whom he deeply cares about. The first book is too realistic and boring, the second one is entirely fiction and unconvincing, and the last book is dedicated to his love: "The History of Love." Leo promises he will never love anyone but Alma.Alma, now 20, is sent to the United States by her father, who feared the alarming news concerning fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
Germany. Leo does not know that Alma is pregnant and dreams of going to America to meet her. A short time after, the Germans invade Poland and Leo takes cover in the woods, living on roots, small animals, bugs and what he can steal from farmers' cellars. After two years of hiding he goes to America and finds Alma but is shocked to hear she thought he had died in the war and had married the son of the manager of the factory she works at. He is devastated when he finds she has had another child with her husband. He asks her to come with him, but she refuses. She tells him, however, about his son Isaac who is now five years old. Heartbroken, Leo leaves and becomes a locksmith. Leo regularly watches Isaac from a distance, wishing to be part of the boy’s life but scared to come in contact with him.
In the present day, Leo is a lonely old man who waits for his death, along with his recently found (most probably in his imagination) childhood friend, Bruno Shultz, especially since Alma has been dead for five years. Leo still keeps track of his son, who has become a famous writer, much to Leo’s enjoyment since he believes Isaac inherited the talent from his father. Leo's depression deepens when he reads in a newspaper that his son has died at the age of 60, and Leo develops an obsession with finding his place in his son's world, to the extent that he breaks into Isaac’s house to see if he had read "The History of Love". Leo wants to reread "The History of Love", so he tries to obtain a copy of the book that he gave to his friend Zvi Litvinoff, who had immigrated to Chile. Their friendship dates from when Leo fell gravely ill in Poland and wrote his own obituary, after which Lev stole it in the hope that it would keep his friend alive. Leo writes a letter to Zvi, but his wife informs him that the book was destroyed in a flood, conspiring to hide that her husband did not write "The History of Love".
Unknown to Leo is that the book had been published in a small printing of two thousand copies (and re-published upon the supposed author's death) in Spanish, but under the name of Zvi Litvinoff, who copied the book thinking Leo was killed in Poland. Zvi felt so guilty for copying his book that he added his friend’s stolen obituary as the last chapter, telling the publisher that including the obituary was conditional to printing the book, although doing so did not make sense with the plot. When Leo called to recover the book, Zvi's wife, Rosa, fearing her husband would lose his fame if the world found out his well-regarded book was plagiarized
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
, lied by saying the manuscript had been destroyed in a flood, and then manufactured a flood in her house to realize the lie. Zvi died later without telling the world about the real author of "The History of Love".
In a parallel story, a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Alma Singer, named after the Alma in "The History of Love", her parents’ favorite book, is struggling to cope with the loss of her father due to cancer. Her mother becomes distant and lonely, escaping into her work of book translation. Her younger brother Bird, so called for jumping from the second story of a building hoping he could fly, seeks refuge in religion and believes himself to be one of God’s chosen people, thus distancing himself from reality. Alma finds refuge in one of her father’s hobbies: surviving in the wild. Alma also bears a crush on her Russian pen friend Misha, who has moved to New York. The two become a couple but they break up because of Alma’s incertitude.
One day, her mother receives a letter from a mysterious man named Jacob Marcus who requests that she translate "The History of Love" from Spanish to English for $100,000 dollars, to be paid in increments of $25,000 as the work progresses. Alma’s mother finds the sum suspicious, but the stranger confesses that his mother used to read the book to him when he was a child, so it has a great sentimental value. Alma sees this as an opportunity to help her mother recover from her depression and changes her mother’s straight-forward letters to Jacob Marcus into more romantic versions. When the letters stop before her mother completes the translation of the book, Alma decides to find the mysterious client.
She starts by noting down what she knows about Jacob Marcus in her diary, and concludes that the Alma in the book was real and proceeds to find her. She struggles in her search for Alma Mereminski, but succeeds when she realizes that Alma could have married and finds her under the name of Moritz. She is disappointed to hear that Alma has been dead for five years. However, she finds out that Isaac Moritz is the first of Alma's sons and a famous writer. When she starts reading his bestselling book, she finds that the main character's name is Jacob Marcus and realizes that Isaac Moritz had hired her mother to translate the book. Isaac is dead, however, which explains why his letters had stopped coming to their home. To be sure about her suspicions, Alma leaves a note on Isaac’s door asking who the writer of the novel is.
In the meanwhile, Bird finds Alma’s diary and misinterprets the names Alma Mereminski and Alma Moritz as being his sister’s real names, and believes they had different fathers. Isaac’s brother calls Alma, after reading the note and the original manuscript of the book, to tell her that Gursky is the real author, but Bird answers the telephone and it confuses him even further. He now suspects that Leopold Gursky is Alma's real father. To cleanse his sin of bragging and to regain the status as one of the chosen ones, he decides to set up a meeting with Alma and Gursky, thus doing a good deed without anybody knowing except God.
When the two receive the letter regarding their meeting, both are confused: Alma tries to discover which of the people she met during her searches could have sent her the note, while Leo comes to believe it was Alma who sent him the note, despite her being dead.
The two meet and are both a bit confused. Leo mentions some of his life's secrets in an effort to make conversation, while Alma pieces the puzzle pieces together. When Alma confronts him about his past asking him if ever loved a girl named Alma Mereminski or if he wrote "The History of Love", the old man finally feels a sense of recognition he was lacking during most of his life, has a heart attack and dies.
The last chapter is entitled "The Death of Leopold Gursky" and is identical with the last chapter of the book inside a book "The History of Love", both being the self written obituary of Leopold Gursky.
Literary allusions in The History of Love
There are many thematically significant literary allusions in The History of Love. The writer Isaac BabelIsaac Babel
Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature...
(1894–1940), as eulogized by Leo Gursky, has unmistakable affinities with Zvi Litvinoff's description of Leo's own writing style, and the description of Rosa Litvinoff's writing style in the early chapter "Forgive Me". The Polish writer Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born to Jewish parents, and regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, in the province of Galicia then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and spent...
(1892–1942) and his classic The Street of Crocodiles
The Street of Crocodiles
The Street of Crocodiles is a 1934 collection of short stories written by Bruno Schulz. First published in Polish, the collection was translated into English by Celina Wieniewska in 1963.-Origins and publication:...
are mentioned several times in the novel, as is Nicanor Parra
Nicanor Parra
Nicanor Parra Sandoval is a mathematician and poet born in San Fabián de Alico, Chile, who has been considered to be a popular poet in Chile with enormous influence and popularity in Latin America, and also considered one of the most important poets of the Spanish language literature...
(1914-), whose 1954 book of antipoems is translated by Charlotte Singer and read by the mysterious Jacob Marcus. A passing reference to "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) is also significant because Don Quixote is a novel that contains stand-alone stories within it, much in the same way that The History of Love contains excerpts of a mysterious book called "The History of Love." Other important literary allusions in the novel include references to James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
, Rubén Darío
Rubén Darío
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento , known as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century...
and Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
.
Although he is never directly mentioned, the novel is also alluding to Isaac Singer. Leo's son's name is Isaac and Alma's last name is Singer.
Graphic design and the themes and structure of The History of Love
Graphic design is important to the themes and structure of The History of Love. The dedication page consists of four photographs and the dedication: "For My Grandparents, who taught me the opposite of disappearing and For JonathanJonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...
, my life." The use of photographs here is significant because of photography's prominent role in the novel as proof of life or presence (an idea reinforced by the actual words of dedication.) Another important intersection of graphic design is how each character is associated with an icon that appears at the head of each chapter: Leo with a heart; Alma with a compass; Zvi with an open book; and Bird with an ark. These icons may be used as a starting point for defining these characters. For example, it makes sense that Alma is associated with a compass because she spends much of the novel doing research, asking questions, and investigating her past and the past of the mysterious book called "The History of Love." Finally, the novel includes interesting typography, such as cross-outs (in Alma's journal) and a series of pie graphs of her ancestry, which appear on page 96. The pie graphs and accompanying context illustrate how identity is not an open-or-shut question or a yes-or-no proposition.
Comparisons to Extremely Loud...
The History of Love was published in early 2005 as was Extremely Loud and Incredibly CloseExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.The book's narrator is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell. Two years before the story begins, Oskar's father dies on 9/11...
, written by Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...
who had just married Krauss. Both books feature a precocious youth who set out in New York City on a quest. Both protagonists encounter old men with memories of World War II (a Holocaust survivor in Krauss and a survivor of the Dresden firebombing
Bombing of Dresden in World War II
The Bombing of Dresden was a military bombing by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force and as part of the Allied forces between 13 February and 15 February 1945 in the Second World War...
in Foer). Both old men recently suffered the death of long-lost sons. The stories also use some similar and uncommon literary techniques, such as unconventional typography.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
The book was optioned by Warner Bros.Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
in early 2005, and is set to be directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón Orozco is a Mexican film director, screenwriter and film producer, best known for his films Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y tu mamá también, and A Little Princess.- Early life :...
. The movie is currently scheduled for release in 2012.
External links
- Some Thoughts on the Meaning of Photography in The History of Love Discusses the meaning of photography in the novel.
- Resources for The History of Love University of Texas Arlington OneBook Resource Guide
- Nicole Krauss on Youtube Krauss discusses her creative process
- The History of Love book details on wwnorton.com (publisher website)